All,
As the custodian of issue 4 I'd like to propose the following resolution
and rationale.
Proposed Resolution:
A SOAP message MUST NOT contain a Document Type Declaration or
Processing Instructions. On receipt of a SOAP message containing a
Document Type Declaration or Processing Instruction a SOAP receiver MUST
either ignore it or generate a fault (see 4.4 SOAP Fault) with faultcode
of "Client.DTD" or "Client.PI" respectively.
Rationale:
In discussions [1,2] there is near universal antipathy towards allowing
DTDs in SOAP messages. The attitude towards PIs is somewhat less
negative, but is still broadly in favour of exclusion. This maintains
the current status-quo inherited from SOAP 1.1.
Issue 4 relates to the action a SOAP receiver should take on receipt of
a message which includes a DTD or PIs. My original suggestion for
resolution[1] was to require the SOAP receiver to generate a fault on
receipt of such a message but this was felt to impose an unecessary
burden on receivers.
An alternative resolution[3] suggested relaxation of my original
proposal such that receivers SHOULD ignore DTDs and PIs and MAY generate
a fault but this formulation leaves open the possibility of having a
compliant SOAP processor that doesn't ignore DTDs and PIs and doesn't
generate a fault which I don't think is the desired behaviour.
In the spirit of a friendly amendment to the preceeding suggestion I
propose to give implementations the option of either ignoring DTDs and
PIs or generating a fault on their receipt.
Comments ?
Marc.
[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/xml-dist-app/2001May/0367.html
[2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/xml-dist-app/2001Sep/0159.html
[3] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/xml-dist-app/2001Sep/0167.html
--
Marc Hadley <marc.hadley@sun.com>
XML Technology Centre, Sun Microsystems.